


The Anderson Murders

by theoneswhowonder



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blackmail, Character Death, Gen, M/M, Murder, Post The Great Game, Sherlock is bored, anderson - Freeform, anderson is depressed, casefic, fun times at the pub, god this is really horrible, john doesn't mind sherlock being strange, john is done with it all, nanowrimo work in progress, not sure yet - Freeform, possible johnlock - Freeform, quantity not quality, sherlock doesn't know where to place his new emotions, these tags are the result of my boredom, unedited writing, updates coming once a day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:34:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2558156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoneswhowonder/pseuds/theoneswhowonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title to be confirmed. Open to suggestions. I literally pulled this one out of my ass.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title to be confirmed. Open to suggestions. I literally pulled this one out of my ass.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a mysterious crime scene, and John overreacts to dead things.

The woman was almost gone. Her head was laying on the cement, dark brown curls billowing from her head and masking the crimson blood pooling in a slow but steady drip. A man stood looming over her, his face hidden by the dark. The tip of his leather dress shoes nudged the woman’s pale arm.  
“Throw her out. She sickens me.”  
Another man scurried, mouselike, from behind a tower of stacked cardboard boxes.  
The man’s small frame cast a shadow across the woman, whose green eyes were straining to stay open. He struggled to lift her into his arms. The woman gasped and threw back her head, but she was exerting herself far too much. The smaller man breathed a sigh of relief as the woman lapsed into unconsciousness.  
“Should I put her in the boat, sir, or directly into the water?”  
The taller man turned away from the smaller man and the woman, and sauntered to a door that lead out of the building. As he neared the edge, he paused and looked back over his shoulder.  
“It makes no difference to me. Just be quiet about it. I’ll see you tomorrow, Herbert.”  
The man walked out of the door, leaving Herbert in the dark with the dead woman in his arms.

 

John woke with a start, pulling his clenched hand away from the pillow and jerking his head free from the sweaty fabric of the mattress. His heart thudded in his chest as though it was attempting to wrench itself free from the confines of his torso, and his pulse was violently coursing through his veins, pathways of electricity causing his hair to stand on end. John wished that his dream had been one of his normal nightmares, one with the arid desert sand swirling through the hastily put up tents in which he tried to save the wounded from their own mortality. Guns firing bullets, men falling, shattered images of bombs creating crimson supernovas of flesh and blood.These were the dreams which John had learned to deal with, and though they rarely came now, they still shook him to the bone. No, this wasn’t like the others. This was a dream far more personal than the generic effects of war on a soldier. Sherlock stood tall and defiant on the tiles of the pool floor, his face hardened and emotionless. The jacket was directly opposite him, the hand holding the sleek silver gun pointing towards it was all too steady. One shot, and the sound of the explosion was ringing in John’s ears. He blinked, once, and Sherlock was gone. 

John knew it was a dream, just a dream, but as he calmed himself down, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it would still happen. He laid there, spread eagle armed across the tangled white sheets, until he could feel his body stop pulsating from the adrenaline. As he breathed quietly to himself, he could hear the sounds of tinkling glass and loud bangs coming from the room below him. These were sure signs of Sherlock’s boredom, and they reassured him that his dream was in fact, just that, a dream. A smile flitted onto John’s face for a moment, then passed as quickly away as it had arrived. He might have to put up with a lot of hell from that man, but he wouldn’t know where he would be without him. Living from day to day, no doubt. He knew that Sherlock was the one who had saved him. When he arrived back home from Afghanistan, he had been passing the time, waiting for the day when he would gather his courage, grit his teeth, and make good use out of that handgun in his drawer. His existence had become a chore, his survival had meant nothing. He was at the end of his rope. But the day that he had been summoned to St Barts hospital had changed everything. His encounter with the appearingly psychic genius had sent his world spinning back into balance. It was as if he was abruptly jerked back into life with a defibrillator. The rush of the chase, the companionship, the brilliancy of it all, that was just a plus. John was happy to be there next to Sherlock, happy that he was allowed to live this life still. It was hard for him to realize that it could all be taken away with a single bullet, and it nearly had. The mere thought sent his mind down unsavory thoughts, so it was no wonder that the dream had had such an effect on him. And with Sherlock’s occupation, John knew that a premature death was a very real possibility. He just hoped that when the time came, if it ever did, that he would die alongside Sherlock. 

The sounds coming from downstairs had not faded. In fact, they had been increasing in both volume and persistency. John sighed, having no wish to wander from the warm atmosphere of his heated bedroom and into the freezing floor below. But he knew that if he wanted to survive the day without a toxic spill in the kitchen, he would have to get up now. He shifted over to the edge of the bed, extracted himself from the sheets, and stood on the carpet, roving his eyes over the floor of the room looking for some slippers, or at the very least some warm socks. Finding them flung in a corner, he shuffled over, slipped them on, and opened the door. With the blockage of the door removed, John was able to correctly identify what Sherlock was mucking around with. From the sound of it, he seemed to be tinkering with something left over from last night’s morgue raid. John walked down the stairs, gripping onto the handrail. He hoped that whatever Sherlock was doing wouldn’t set back his daily agenda too much. 

The kitchen came into view. A bright LED bendable lamp was plugged into an outlet on the wall beside the cabinets and set up on the table. Several sharp metal scalpels were clustered around a thawing human foot, and the lamp was angled in such a way to highlight the dark violet blood clot decorating the top of it. Sherlock was rummaging around in the refrigerator, his back to John. He appeared to be looking for something. John stood at the edge of the room and nudged his foot against one of the chairs to signify his arrival. Sherlock didn’t move. John scraped the chair across the floor. Sherlock still had not turned. Getting annoyed now, John made a pointed cough directed to the refrigerator and its temporary inhabitant.  
“I suppose you are annoyed with the foot.”  
John pulled out a chair and sat down on it.  
“Yeah, I am rather annoyed, Sherlock, now that you mention it. You know, most people, me included, do not enjoy starting the day with a healthy dose of human gore in the morning.”

“I told you Molly had brought ‘round some parts from the morgue last night. You seemed perfectly fine with it then.”

“That’s because I was half asleep, Sherlock.”

Silence filled the room. John sighed for the second time that day. It was one sigh too many for the time that John had been awake.

“Fine, it doesn’t matter to me. But it would be nice if you could think of the other person that shares this living space with you for once.”

There was a muffled grunt. Of approval or annoyance, John couldn’t tell. Appearing to locate was he was looking for, Sherlock turned around, with a beaker of something toxic looking clutched in his hands. John felt his face quirk in distaste.

“No. Not now. Just give it a rest, alright?”

A condescending glare found its way onto Sherlock’s visage. He opened his mouth to speak, but John stood up, shoved back the chair, and sauntered out of the room before he could speak. As he was making his way down the stairs and out of the flat, Mrs Hudson swung open her door, nearly hitting him in the face.

“Jesus fuck- Oh, Mrs Hudson.”  
John bit down hard on his lip, balling up his hands into fists behind his back. He forced a smile onto his face.  
“Good morning.”

Mrs Hudson looked distracted.

“Oh, good morning, Dr Watson. Are you boys all right? I’ve been hearing some, some banging noises coming from overhead for quite a while now.. Has he been marking up my walls again?”  
Her face showed two conflicting emotions: anger at the possible slight done to her walls, and concern for Sherlock’s mental health.

“No, no, not at all, Mrs Hudson,” John reassured her.  
“No, he’s just been playing around with some corpses again. Not that I’m very happy about it…”

“Oh,” her face cleared.  
“That’s all right, then.”

She caught sight of John’s dark expression.

“Are you all right, dear?”

John didn’t want to talk about his complicated living arrangements with Mrs Hudson at the moment.

“Yes, yeah, I’m fine. Well the, have a nice day, Mrs Hudson.”

With one more concerned look at John’s direction, Mrs Hudson shut her door. His posture slumping, John continued down the stairs, hoping for a more decent day than this morning.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is having a bad day. Anderson is having a worse one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my second update! Woohoo! Feeling proud of myself for not abandoning this piece of shit. I started NaNo a day late, so I will have to cram more words into my next "chapter." Hope everybody out there in the fanfiction-sphere is having a better day than Anderson.

John spent the whole day thinking about his behavior towards Sherlock that morning. He spent the day spent roaming through Tesco, performing various household errands, and meeting up for a chat with Mike. By the end of it all John was beyond tired, and still not able to escape his guilt of snapping at Sherlock like that. It wasn’t as if Sherlock had done anything drastic; certainly not anything that John would classify as incredibly “not good.” No, it was John who had overreacted, and that confused him. He was used to Sherlock’s antics by now, and while he knew that he had a larger amount of patience in his character than most people did, he still acknowledged the fact that he was human, and sometimes could not find it in him to deal with the simply grotesque sides of living with the consulting detective.

Needless to say, John was not looking forward to returning to 221 B and facing the sure-to-be sulking Sherlock. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, causing the flood of passers-by to part around him, many of them grumbling at John as they did so. John grunted, set down the bags that he had been lugging around all day, and checked the time. As he glanced down at his watch, he realized that he was standing in front of his regular pub. Seeing as it was only seven o’clock, he might as well go knock back a few pints. After all, he had had a very stressing day, and it was only human nature of him to need to unwind. Picking his bags back up and hanging them on his arms, he swung open the doors to the pub.

The pub was dimly lit, and the walls were covered in posters of football teams. Careworn booths hugged the sides of the walls, and the bar was occupied with the frequent pub goers. John recognized one of them, a man named Joseph, and nodded his head to him in greeting as he walked through the door. Ordering his drink from the bartender, John sat down at one of the stools and let his head sag onto the countertop. He smoothed his hair back with his hands and groaned softly into his folded arms. 

“Bad day, eh?”

The bartender was there, placing the mug of beer on the countertop. His freckle-sprinkled face was twisted in a sympathetic expression.  
John shook his head.

“Well, it’s certainly not the worst I’ve ever had, but, yes, it was bothersome. I’m just glad that I can finally relax.”

The man nodded his head in what John assumed to be agreement.

“Oh, I hear you, mate. I’ve had days like those. Seems to me like they’re unavoidable.”

The bartender left to take an order from another pub-goer, and John allowed his gaze to wander around the room. A man sat on a stool two seats away from him on his right, his left leg draped over his right knee and tapping up and down. He seemed nervous. John wondered why. If Sherlock here, John knew, he would be able to deduce everything about this man, from the cause of his anxiety to the preference of his underwear. Sherlock had come with him to the pub, on the rare occasion that his boredom was so much that he couldn’t find the will to throw himself into a complicated experiment. John would bring him here, as a safety measure,and they would sit in the booth in the front of the pub, John sipping his drink and Sherlock making deductions every time a new customer walked through the door. That usually took his mind off the tediousness of a dull day. As a plus, John was actually able to enjoy himself, as, thanks to the alcohol, Sherlock’s normally sharp tongue was softened. 

John was starting to lose his train of thought as he recalled Sherlock’s smile, the way he turned up his collar in the chill of the night, covering that pale slender neck beneath a thin layer of cloth. John sometimes wished that he could brush that fabric aside, turn the collar down and watch Sherlock shiver in the gusts of wind coming from the passing cars of the streets. He pretended he wasn’t human, that he was beneath the messy emotions that “ordinary” people felt, but John knew that that was just a persona that Sherlock slipped into, a performance that he put on to gain the respect from others. Sherlock did have emotions. It was evident in the way he acted towards Mrs Hudson, for example, or the times that he had held back from criticising Lestrade during the most obvious of mistakes. It was evident that one night in the pool, as John saw for a fleeting moment the utter despair that Sherlock felt when he believed John to be Moriarty. The night at the pool…..

John shuddered. He downed a sip of his drink, then leaned forward once again, supporting himself. This was not what he had come here for. Glancing around the room once more, trying to distract himself from the thoughts threatening to ruin his evening, John noticed a familiar figure slouched over a pint, huddled in a booth at the far side of the pub. It was Anderson. His shoulders appeared to be shaking, and he was holding his head in cupped hands. 

Stealing another look, John picked up his glass and made his way over to Anderson’s booth. Normally, he wouldn’t care less what was going on in Anderson’s life, but the man really did look upset. 

Lowering himself into the seat opposite Anderson, he made a soft cough to alert his presence.

“Hurk- er, hello,” John said quietly, feeling awkward.  
There was no response.  
“I-I’m sorry, are you alright?”

“Alright!” Anderson spluttered, abruptly jerking his head out of his hands. His eyes were rimmed with red, and his nose was swollen.  
“All, alright.. I’m.. alright,” his eyes were out of focus now, and dripping salty tears onto the table in front of him.  
John was alarmed now. He had no idea how to deal with this strange outburst of emotion. He had never known Anderson to display any feeling other than dislike.  
Anderson had gone back down to his former position, and his shoulders resumed shaking.

“Hey, I think you should calm down a bit,” John said nervously. “What happened?”

“My wife- she, she- Katherine, I-” Anderson moaned.  
“She’s just- she’s gone.”  
Anderson rocked himself back and forth.

John was confused.  
“What do you mean, gone? Where is she?’’  
At this, Anderson let out an even louder groan, which caused several customers to whip their heads around in their direction.

“Gone, gone. She’s gone!”  
John leaned in closer.  
“Listen, And- Philip, listen. Have you got a way back to your house? Maybe I can drive you back home. Do you need some help?”  
John didn’t really feel like dealing with whatever this was right now, but he was a semi-decent human being and he could tell that Anderson was in a bad place. The least he could do was get the man home safely. He seemed to be completely out of it.

“No, no, there’s nowhere to go..”Anderson mumbled.  
John was, at this point, genuinely worried. Looking around room, he made up his mind.  
John tugged Anderson’s elbow out from under his head.  
“C’mon, let’s go. It’ll be alright, Philip. It’ll all be fine.”  
Muttering nonsense words of comfort in Anderson’s direction, he pulled Anderson out of his seat and guided him out the door and into the nighttime of the city. Propping Anderson on his left side, he raised his right arm and hailed a cab. Gently shoving Anderson into the back seat, he slid himself next to him, making sure not to sit too close. He directed the driver to Baker Street, and they were driving.

The ride to the flat was filled with the sound of Anderson’s sporadic sniffles and the growing atmosphere of John’s unease. John stared out of the window, eyes tracking the streams of rainwater glowing on the window from the light of passing restaurants. The cab jerked to a halt directly in front of Speedy’s, and John tried his hardest to swallow the lump in his throat at the thought of Sherlock’s probable reaction.John paid the cabbie, lifted himself out, and pulled Anderson outside. Leading Anderson up the stairs, John opened the door to the living room and directed him onto the couch. Anderson was completely rigid, his spine straight and his face blank. John avoided speaking to Anderson while he was in this state, and instead opted to go to the kitchen and make some tea. It was what John did in times of uncertainty, and the ritual helped him to think logically. John was displeased to notice the foot still resting on the table. It had defrosted, and the blood had coagulated to a lovely blob that bathed the room in a most glorious stench. Grabbing two mugs from the top cabinet, the voice that John had been dreading sounded itself from the area of Sherlock’s room.

“John, who’s here? It better not be Mycroft, he has no reason to come here anyway. Although if it is Mycroft, tell him to piss off.”

John ignored the command.  
“Been busy today?”  
“Very.”  
“Hmm.”

John heard footsteps, and Sherlock appeared from the hallway.  
“Pub?”  
“Yes.”  
“Interesting.”  
“Not really, no.”  
“I wasn’t commenting on your going down to the pub, I was simply remarking that it was a coincidence that Anderson’s wife went missing on the same day that that woman’s body was found in the Thames. They look very similar, don’t you think, John?”

John’s mouth was gaping. He looked over at Anderson, who was still staring at the wall.  
“You can’t possibly mean that-,”  
“Most definitely,” Sherlock confirmed. He looked rather smug.  
Anger flowed through John’s body, causing him to clench his teeth. Without thinking, he stood up and grabbed Sherlock’s hair, not releasing his hold when Sherlock let out a surprised  
“Ow.”  
“You show some fucking sense, Sherlock. His wife’s just been killed!” John hissed in his ear.  
“You better damn be kind towards this man, I have had it with you today.”  
He released Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock straightened himself and stood to his full height, clearly miffed. His eyes twitched, as if to almost roll in their sockets. He shifted his lips to the side.  
“Fine,” he said.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anderson gets to sleep on a couch. Sherlock gets to sleep in John's bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was feeling shitty about my writing skills (or lack thereof) and writer's block, so I procrastinated until I was pecking away at the keyboard in the wee hours of the dawn. This explains the disjointed sentences and redundant adjectives littered throughout this "chapter." It also explains why this "chapter" is so incredibly short. Well, what the hell. I can catch up on it over the weekend. Hope everybody out there on the Archive is having a superfantasticalfabulous day/night.

Stepping over the threshold into the living room, John took a seat in his usual chair, the uncomfortableness of the situation he found himself in somewhat dispelled by the familiar routine of sitting in his chair with Sherlock in his own chair across from him. With his eyes closed, John could almost pretend that this was an ordinary case, and not one with the victim being a person that had a connection to their daily lives. Sherlock leaned forward in his chair, flaring his legs out and placing his elbows on his knees. He was staring at Anderson, a calculating stare that John experienced many times firsthand. Anderson wasn’t paying much attention, although his focus had shifted to out of the window.

Sherlock took a moment to glance back at John.

He had a questioning expression on his face. He seemed to be silently asking John how to handle this. This surprised John. Normally Sherlock would jump headfirst into an interrogation with no thought to the client’s emotions. Seeing as this was Anderson, Sherlock’s lifelong tormentor, John was sure that Sherlock would have disregarded his earlier warning to act civil entirely. Sherlock had actually considered being kind to Anderson, and was now asking John for guidance. John could count on one hand the times in which Sherlock had taken his words seriously. 

John made a motion with his hands, miming a comforting motion. He then pointed to Anderson. Almost immediately Sherlock’s face twisted into a grimace of distaste, but John folded his arms, adopted a stern expression, and jerked his head in Anderson’s direction. Breathing a silent sigh and showing a spectacular display of his eye rolling skills, Sherlock heaved himself out of the chair and slided closer to Anderson, hesitantly patting his back. This was enough to snap him out of it.

“What in the bloody hell are you doing! Let go of me!”

Anderson flinched as Sherlock’s hand made contact with his shoulder, then swiftly stood, turning fast on John.

“Why am I here?! Leave me alone!”

Anderson’s face flickered from anger, to suspicion, and then to despair. His energy spent, he fell back onto the couch behind him like a marionette whose strings had been cut. He went back to his former silence, although he was more aware of his surroundings than last time. 

Sherlock decided to take advantage of this development by retreating back to the safety of his chair, giving John an “I told you so” look. With Anderson seemingly catatonic, at least for now, John decided to give up. Let him sleep on the couch for the night, and in the morning, when Anderson was calmer and sobered up, they could speak. Throwing a pillow at the side of the couch furthest from Anderson’s position, John stood up and gently tugged Sherlock into the kitchen.

“He needs to rest. He’s in shock; look at the state of him.”

Ignoring Sherlock’s beginning protests, John pushed further.

“Look, Sherlock, I know that you two don’t exactly have the greatest of office companionships, but you have to get over your differences on this one. Just- just try,  
okay? For me,” he added.

That shut him up.

“Alright, he can sleep on the couch. But if he but touches one of the experiments, you must be alerted that I absolutely will not help on this case. These are my terms.”

Sherlock slipped out of John’s grasp and sauntered out of the kitchen and into his bedroom in his usual melodramatic manner. John reasoned that he may as well make Anderson comfortable, he was going to experience some awful chills if he wasn’t covered during the night. John went to the linen closet and retrieved some blankets and a flannel sheet, placing them at the foot of the couch and checking on Anderson.  
Poor bastard, he still wasn’t right. John wished that he had somebody to go home to, at the very least he expected that Lestrade would be the one to help him through this, but as of late Lestrade hadn’t been very hospitable towards Anderson. Something about a botched report or something.

John left the living room and prepared himself for bed, going through his nightly routine: brushing his teeth, washing his face, and dressing in clean shorts before falling back into the sheets of his bed. They were still mussed from last night’s nightmare, as he had been too shaken to bother with tucking them in their usual military fashion. It didn’t matter to him now, though, he was just grateful for the rest. Shutting down the worries of the day in his mind, he felt his eyelids droop shut, and he was asleep.

There was a muffled cough, and a nudge to John’s leg. He grumbled in his sleep, but didn’t wake. Sherlock breathed a sigh of relief. He was sure that John wouldn’t be happy waking to find him creeping into his bed with him. But Sherlock couldn’t sleep. Not that he usually did much sleeping, of course, too many things to be done, but this night had left him feeling exhausted. Not unnatural, as John would say, as Sherlock had been running on two hours of sleep in the past seventy two hours. No, these things, these, emotions, that Sherlock would be the last to admit actually having, were making his brain race. They had nothing to do with Anderson’s dead wife, of course they didn’t, that was too average an event to lead his mind out of control. No, it was this strangely growing fascination, almost like a tumorous growth, that had been threatening to override his hard drive for days now, months even.

He wasn't sure how he would classify it, as the normal expression seemed to be too weak a word for what Sherlock believed himself to be feeling. It was like a constant thought in the back of his mind, hiding there behind the more important facts and showing its face in the most unlikely of times. Witnessing John’s purely selfless actions today should have left him feeling sick, but he found that they twisted his stomach in a more uncomfortable feeling. They had given him a kind of warming heat, shot through his stomach and spreading out to his fingers and toes. It was the strangest sensation, Sherlock thought as he moved himself closer to John’s sleeping form. It was not lust, no, that was a much stronger sort of heat, a burning, almost. And the common feeling of affection was much duller than this feeling, so Sherlock could rule that one out, too. It was closer to pride, or to admiration, or joy. It was all of these things, but something a little bit more. 

Sherlock couldn’t place his finger on it, but as he took comfort of John’s slow breathes, he decided that he needn't worry about finding it. It simply was, and that was just fine for Sherlock. Feeling his thoughts taking a more relaxed turn, he allowed his body to drift into sleep, curling his arm over John’s side as he did.

The light filtered through John curtains, and he yawned as he stretched his arms over his head, feeling well rested and ready to greet the day. He suddenly became aware of a presence next to him, a warm and lanky presence. Slowly turning his head and not quite believing what he saw, he witnessed Sherlock execute a perfectly full throated snore, causing the bed to rumble with its force. His dark curls were splayed out over the white pillowcase, and face was buried into the mattress. One arm hung uncomfortably off of the bed, and the other was draped across John, causing him to wonder why he had not realized that sooner. John’s mind was split into two paths of thought, one confused and very, very annoyed, while the other was saying to him:  
“I could get used to this.”  
Deciding to roll with it, John settled back under the sheets and kept his eyes wide open, staring at the light on the ceiling. He had a feeling that this was to be the start of another long day.


End file.
